Tag: folk music

Being Your Own Gravel Road: A Conversation with H.C. McEntire

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Singer/songwriter H.C. McEntire has been making music for many years now — formerly with the punk band Bellafea and more recently with the indie country outfit Mount Moriah. But last year, she paused that trajectory to tour with Angel Olsen. Speaking from her home in North Carolina, she explains, “There are not many voices I’d put my own career on hold for.” The opportunity was an exciting one, but McEntire’s not prone to multi-tasking, so she found it hard to stay connected to her own creative direction while touring someone else’s.

Enter: Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna. A chance encounter between the two women developed into a professional acquaintance, which eventually became a strong friendship. Upon request, McEntire sent Hanna her entire hard drive of demos, hoping Hanna could forge a path through the disparate songs she’d written outside of Mount Moriah’s catalogue. “A lot of it was weird, abstract punk stuff that didn’t fit in to other things I was making, and some of it was real sweet pop, kind of twee,” she says. “It was all over the place.” Rather than cull together the raucous material, Hanna saw something in McEntire’s folk-driven country tunes, so the pair worked closely to refine the ideas that’d been bubbling on the margins for years. Sometimes, in order to find your voice, you need someone to guide you back to it.

McEntire’s resulting debut solo album, LIONHEART, sets about reclaiming country music from the bros, belles, and other tropes that fail to leave room for new stories because they’re proscribed as “the norm.” Growing up a queer woman in the South, she’s familiar with such labels and how they’re used as an exclusionary tactic.

McEntire was raised in a Southern Baptist family; she learned about the communal inclusivity church can offer only to experience its steely opposite when she came out. The hymnal ballad “When You Come For Me” finds her questioning her place in the land that birthed her against woozy pedal steel and a quavering rhythm. “Mama, I dreamed that I had no hand to hold. And the land I cut my teeth on wouldn’t let me call it home,” she sings, her voice forthright.

She’s struggled with her faith, her family, and even herself over the years and, with Hanna’s guidance, has channeled the result of those trials and the subsequent peace she’s found into LIONHEART. On “Quartz in the Valley,” the conventional images that have long embodied the South shed their sheen: Mascara-caked lashes smear after a long, passionate night, bouffant hair wilts with the sunrise. McEntire repurposes the region in her image, making a space for herself rather than waiting for a space to be made. There’s no metaphor more assertive than when she sings “this gravel road don’t need paving.”

What does Americana mean to you, and how have you found yourself defining it in your own terms?

It’s situational for me. I think a lot of us end up using it, and we don’t totally know why or, at least, I don’t know where it all started.

It’s a more recent definition for a lot of different styles, like an umbrella term.

That’s how I feel, too. Not that it doesn’t have value, but I think it’s kind of … I’m sure there’s a fancy word for it, but just like a term that gets used so much you forget what it means.

And yet somehow manages to be exclusive.

Right, because people think Americana isn’t country, like there’s a hard line there. So I guess my answer is I don’t know.

You’ve played other musical styles in the past, your musical career, but the traditions you cull on LIONHEART harken back to your upbringing. Why was it important to use that music to make this statement?

I think as I’ve gotten older — and maybe it’s something that you do, you know, reflecting on your childhood and what you cut your teeth on — it just kinda happened. I started remembering what music I loved and it was a natural thing. Maybe it’s like a language that I stepped away from and lost a little bit, and I’ve been slowly trying to relearn and reconstruct in this way that fits my life.

There’s something powerful about co-opting the language that can be used against you and making it your own, so I could see musical styles serving that same idea. What did you grow up listening to?

All my family lives on one road. There’s a communal farm in the middle, and that was the hub, that was the homestead. My uncle ran a mechanic shop there, and there was always country music playing from the radio — ’80s country, pretty much — which is a lot of the country I love. Also, I was privy to all the old-time and the bluegrass that trickled in from community get-togethers, like church. Lots of hymns. That’s a big pillar for me. That’s what I remember listening to, up until I started getting some cassettes, like Bruce Springsteen and the Beach Boys. Those were supplemental, but the foundation was whatever was circulating through the radio dial or the church.

You said you’ve strengthened your connection to your faith in recent years?

It’s definitely a process that I’m still refining. I grew up in a Southern Baptist family, and the church was really close to our house; my great-great-great-whatever grandfather founded it back in the 1700s. That’s just what you did. I never really thought about it. I had moments where I connected with it on a deep level, and I had a lot of moments and years where I was sort of robotic. As a teenager and later in my teens, I realized, as I started forming my own beliefs, that a lot of those were incongruent to what I was hearing on Sunday mornings, and it was really confusing. I struggled with that for a very long time. When I went off to college, I shut the door on organized religion. I felt kind of betrayed by it. It was painful; I didn’t think I had a place in it. I was bitter and, for many years, I could not talk about religion.

I can see how you’d want to stop trying to connect.

Exactly. All the while, I really felt a void. I was hungry for those moments when I was younger, when I was sitting on the pew, and I felt this profound power in the form of a congregation. Those moments where I did feel love, and I did feel faith, I was hungry for those again, but I wanted them on my own terms. They needed to make me feel valid and whole. Over the last 10 years, I lowered my guard — a lot of this is in this record, I did that. I had to be really vulnerable.

On “Quartz in the Valley,” you’ve got one of the finest metaphors I’ve heard in some time: “This gravel road, it don’t need paving.” How did you set about clearing a space for yourself in a home that hasn’t always been accepting?

That’s a cool line.

It’s a great line!

I hadn’t thought about it that way.

I thought it was such a great declaration, and I don’t even know if you meant it like that.

I definitely think I was alluding to something. All I can say is, it’s taken a long time, and a lot of stops and starts, and a lot of being vulnerable and really being active about researching certain spiritualities that I’m interested in, or experimenting with different churches in the area. It was really hard walking through the door of the first church that I went back to, but once that happened, it’s been so liberating and I realized that it’s not a formula. Re-discovering that and reconnecting with [my spirituality], I feel more whole. I feel whole in a way that I’ve never felt. I’m allowing my spiritual journey just to be whatever it is. I don’t really adhere to labels or anything, so I just want to grow.

I feel like any time you add a descriptor to an experience like that, people tend to characterize it in terms of exclusion.

Exactly. That word “exclusion,” to me, that is really confusing when you talk about spirituality because it’s the opposite of exclusion. But there’s so much of that, especially in the South. Certain groups find power and they quell their own anxieties and fears by excluding other people.

It’s the opposite of the message.

Exactly.

Your relationship with the land comes across powerfully in “When You Come for Me.” Where does it stand now?

When I wrote that, I was imagining the land I grew up on — the road I’m talking about with my family — and I think it also was inspired a little bit by … several years ago, I learned that my parents had bought my brother and me this plot in the church cemetery. That is actually a normal thing to do, just buy up a whole thing so your family can be together, but it made me think what that actually meant. I’ve carried a lot of pain with me over the years. I grew up in a very tight-knit family, and I love the land I grew up on. It’s in the foothills of the mountains in western North Carolina; it’s a small town. I’ve been in a lot of pain with how to relate to that particular area, socially, culturally.

Right. If they’re not making a space for you, then how do you see yourself as part of the community?

I think it’s actually more of a question to my family. It’s something I’ve been grappling with. My self-identity and yearning for that land and that inclusion, but I’ve never totally been accepted by my family. I’m still coming out to them over and over again.

Do you feel like you’ve reached a shift from proving yourself to making a statement?

There’s some peace in it. I feel I’ve reached this point where I don’t want to say I’ve stopped trying, but I’ve stopped forcing it. A lot of LIONHEART has been me reckoning with all this we’re talking about, so there must be some sort of peace that I’m at least able to write about it in a poetic way. That’s a challenge I liked: How can I connect with these communities and with different layers of myself and do it in a poetic narrative instead of a punk song or a hit-you-over-the-head anthem? I’m interested in finding that medium place where I can relate to all sides.

Kathleen Hanna isn’t exactly an artist I would place under the umbrella of Americana, but I love that you two connected and she kept wanting to talk about your music. Can you delve into that collaboration?

I’m sometimes still surprised.

It feels like kismet!

Yeah, it was a real gift that the universe gave me. I’ve looked up to her for a long time. We peripherally had been friends, but just through the music scene — the punk scene. She provided this mentorship that — I’m going to get emotional — it came to me at a time when I needed some direction. I was pretty lost creatively: I wasn’t sure where Mount Moriah was going, I’d just taken this job singing in Angel Olsen’s band that I knew was going to physically and creatively take me away from certain things.

This record would not be … it just tears me up. She didn’t have to do all that. She didn’t have to be this editor and mentor and fan of what I was doing, but it just shows what kind of person she is. She asked me to send her demos. None of us knew exactly what her role was going to be, whether it would be her producing or me and her co-writing things, and it kind of became all of the above. I sent her everything I had on my hard drive, like six or seven years. I anticipated her to be drawn to the more rocking, cathartic music that I knew she had made, but everything she picked were all the country songs. I think that’s when I knew that it was real. I needed to trust her and step back a little bit and let somebody have the first shovel dig.

Especially if you’re going through creative doubts, to have someone step in and build you up is worth more than gold.

Oh, totally. It’s been one of the most powerful things in my life. I needed someone to believe in me. I’d lost sight of that. I loved singing with Angel; I loved my role in that band, but it psyched me out too because I’m not very good at multi-tasking. There are not many voices I’d put my own career on hold for, but in the middle of all that, I got lost and Kathleen … like you said, it’s one of those things that even further connects me to the spiritual world, quite frankly.

It almost, in its own way, feels like amends for what you’ve been through.

Damn, dog. Yeah! That is a really amazing way to think about that.

Just having her listen through your entire hard drive of music … that alone … not many people would spend that kind of time.

It was symbiotic in a lot of ways. I think she got a lot out of switching gears and trying on a different hat. We were both new at all angles of it.

Are you ready to loose it on the world?

I’m ready to see what this year has in store. I’m trying not to have expectations, because this record could get panned a lot of different ways, and I could get pigeonholed a lot of different ways. It really got me out of a dark place, so I’m grateful to it, no matter what happens.

Photo credit: Heather Evans Smith

Eschewing Authenticity: A Conversation with Willie Watson

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When Willie Watson steps out alone on stage in Allston, Massachusetts, he looks every bit as though he’s wandered out of another time. His wide-brimmed hat, plain button-down shirt, and twangy banter all pin him to a different era. Beginning to play the banjo, Watson overlays his preferred clawhammer style with warbling vibrato, all of which add to the picture — as if he’d been among the musicians who traipsed to Bristol, Tennessee, to participate in Ralph Peer’s recording sessions in 1927. Comments about authenticity have long dogged him, but Watson prefers to avoid such talk. He’s not attempting to recreate so much as create, and he just so happens to be using the past for inspiration.

The former Old Crow Medicine Show member is touring behind his sophomore solo album, Folksinger Vol. 2, which culls an array of folk songs — for example “Gallows Pole,” “The Cuckoo Bird,” and “John Henry.” To gain his footing, Watson looked to Lead Belly, Reverend Gary Davis, and more as models. For him, they’re players who created such magic through their respective voices and instruments that he jealously sought ways to participate in that feeling many decades later. He recorded Folksinger Vol. 2 with David Rawlings on analog tape, nodding to a sepia-colored sound. But for those who consider what he does in purist terms, Watson eschews such notions. This isn’t about a musician chasing the past or attempting to preserve it; the latest batch of songs on his new album are his attempt to get closer to a style of music he loves and hopes others might happen to enjoy.

Do you ever get the feeling you should’ve been born in a different time period?

No, not at all. I think there’s a time and place for all this kind of music. If it were a different time, then I wouldn’t have all these other influences that inform what I do and the way that I do it. I think I’m in just the right time. Sometimes this modern world can wear me down a little bit, but for the most part, it’s all good.

Your catalogue seems like a tip of the hat to the array of music Harry Smith once collected for the Anthology of American Folk Music. Why was it important for you to draw on so many different styles?

I didn’t really think of it as important; it’s just the stuff that I love. I don’t know that any of this is important. A lot of people seem to focus on that, like, “Oh, this is so historic and it’s preserving history.” The songs that I put on there, they’re just because I love all this old music and I want to do it all. I listen to a Neil Young record with Crazy Horse and I’m thinking, “These guys are having a really, really good time.” That sounds like something I wanna do. I really don’t wanna go out and play football with the neighbors, and I really don’t wanna go to track practice, and I certainly don’t want to study math, but I really want to be on that stage with Neil Young. It’s the same with this old music. You listen to Lead Belly singing with the Golden Gate Quartet and you think, “That’s some fun stuff.” It changes over the years, as you grow and you mature; your influences and things change. But I don’t know if it’s important. If it’s important to somebody else, then great. It’s important to me … hey, I don’t even know why it’s important to me.

Well something clicks. It’s a spark.

Yeah.

You’ve mentioned that you’re not trying to be a purist. To some extent, that mindset has run through and still runs through bluegrass and other folk traditions. Why is it important for you to avoid that restriction?

Just because it is a restriction, and I don’t like any of those restrictions. I can only do things in the way I know how. I never really liked bluegrass music; I never listened to bluegrass. It was okay, but it’s certainly not what captured my attention. What got my attention was old-time string band music and people like Lead Belly. Bluegrass, to me, seemed uptight. It seemed like those guys were wearing suits, and they all sounded exactly the same. It’s this very formal and very standardized thing that never attracted me at all. I couldn’t have cared less about banjo until I discovered what clawhammer banjo was, and what old-time string music sounded like. Since then, I’ve learned to appreciate bluegrass, and I’ve learned to love bluegrass, and I’ve learned the differences between certain people and certain players, but that came over time.

Interesting that you mention the formality of bluegrass because I know, in the ‘60s, listeners saw a more commercialized version of folk with the Kingston Trio and others.

Yeah, again that ‘60s scene, too, is sort of the same story as bluegrass.

It wasn’t what you were looking for.

No, definitely not. I was listening to some radio show, and this guy played something on the station … this guy was singing a song about all that, about how Lead Belly could kick the Kingston Trio’s ass, and how they were not the real thing. I’m going to recognize if something’s not the real thing pretty quick. I look for it. You’re not going to fool me. Kingston Trio, again, I was never into those guys. It was white bread and way too stale. Those guys didn’t have any soul.

“Authentic” can be such a loaded term, when you’re talking about preserving past traditions. What does it mean to you?

Just being honest. I mean authenticity isn’t necessarily … I don’t consider it being historically accurate. You take a mountain man, and he’s lived on the mountain his whole life — his parents did and he’s barely ever left — and he’s an authentic mountain man. That’s one side of it. I come from central New York state, but I’m honest. I love what I do and I love this music and I don’t have to live that life or live that culture just to play the music. No, I’m not a mountain man, and I didn’t grow up in North Carolina, but that’s not necessary to be able to feel it and genuinely be able to … I don’t want to say “interpret,” but yeah interpret it in your own way.

It is, right? Because these songs have been passed down and reimagined, they almost belong more to the interpreters than the originators.

Well, my versions belong to me, so far as I don’t feel I have ownership or possess them, but they’re my versions. I sing “Samson and Delilah” enough, and I sing “Keep It Clean” out on the road, and I put my sound on it. I feel like that’s my song. I don’t consider myself among the ranks of Reverend Gary Davis or anything, but I’m definitely one of the guys.

When I was watching your show last week, it reminded me of a tent revival, which was interesting to see in 2017 in Boston, that you’re able to reproduce that kind of community in a big metropolis.

That seems to be a big part of each night. It’s not like I set out in the beginning to do that. When I set out to do the solo stuff, I just set out to go back to work, really. I used to play in Old Crow and, all of a sudden, I didn’t, and I found myself with my hands up in the air saying, “What the fuck do I do now?” I can’t just sit around, I’ve gotta get out there and keep my name out there, and at least let people know that I’m here. Little did I know that nobody really knew who the fuck I was anyway.

Really?

The hardcore Old Crow fans and the earlier fans [did]. It just happened that my music seemed to really be affecting some people. I think the song choices we put on the first record — which were good choices and they really spoke to people — they reached people the same way that they do me and so, all of a sudden, I find that every night, just about every night, me and the audience have this real connection. That’s a real powerful thing.

It is. I had a ball doing the call and response for “Stewball” during your show. Speaking of that song, it has a similar strumming pattern to “Cuckoo Bird.” Really, so much of the old-time music was more rhythmic than melodic, so how are you trying to distinguish that for modern day audiences?

So many songs are the same song. The list is endless.

Right, and the variations on those songs.

“Cuckoo” and “Stewball” are definitely related. They’re practically the same tune. “Cuckoo” has a modal banjo tuning, so it makes it sound darker and mean sounding. “Stewball” is a major scale. “Cuckoo” has these few little notes that make it in the minor world, as opposed to major. I just do these songs in the way that I can. I’m not the guitar player that Reverend Gary Davis is, so I’ve gotta figure out my own way. It’s really just as simple as that.

Sometimes I’ll think I really want to do this Blind Willie Johnson song, but he’s playing some complicated slide guitar parts and, if I want to do that, I’m going to have to sit and get really good at playing slide guitar and that’s going to take me years. So how do I do it? Well, maybe I can play a Blind Willie Johnson song on the banjo … that’s no different than Bob Dylan taking a song he wrote 30 years ago and completely changing the tempo and putting a band behind it, and changing the song around completely. There’s nothing really new in that. It’s just basically the definition of interpretation.

Photo credit: Meredith Munn

Hangin’ and Sangin’: Birds of Chicago

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From the Bluegrass Situation and WMOT Roots Radio, it’s Hangin’ & Sangin’ with your host, BGS editor Kelly McCartney. Every week Hangin’ & Sangin’ offers up casual conversation and acoustic performances by some of your favorite roots artists. From bluegrass to folk, country, blues, and Americana, we stand at the intersection of modern roots music and old time traditions bringing you roots culture — redefined.

With me today at Hillbilly Central, Birds of Chicago — Allison Russell, JT Nero, with Steve Dawson back in the corner. Welcome, you guys!

Allison Russell: Thank you! Thank you for having us.

You know how happy I am that you’re here!

AR: Well, we are equally, if not happier, to be here.

I love mutual admiration societies. That’s the best kind. Okay, there’s so much going on with you guys. The new American Flowers EP. It’s mostly acoustic, but not strictly acoustic.

AR: Mostly.

And you just moved to Nashville. And then you have the full record coming out in May, Love in Wartime, produced with Luther Dickinson and you [JT Nero], as co-producer.

JT Nero: That’s right.

. . .

On the EP, the anchor of it, I’m gonna say, is the song “American Flowers,” right? Like that’s sort of the heart of it.

AR: Yeah, for sure.

To me, what’s going on in that is, it’s a reminder of the inherent goodness in all of us. But that’s a challenge. It’s a really hard thing. When folks are walking around wearing swastikas or carrying assault rifles, that’s a really tough thing to hold onto. But it has to be an absolute, doesn’t it? Compassion and kindness.

JN: It does. And I think, I mean, a couple of things: People have always been walking around with assault rifles. Our ability in this age to be aware of everything that is going wrong at a given moment is intensified in a way that it never has been before, and it’s very easy to slip into kind of doomsday mentality. Now, having said that, there are some things going on in this country that have never gone on before.

Certainly not in our lifetimes.

JN: Well, I guess I mean administratively. The “American Flowers” thing … it was important to me to not write a song of kind of obvious angel after obvious angel. The vignettes are about different people who are, perhaps, not obviously heroic.

They’re flawed. They’re humans.

JN: But you know, it’s about common humanity, and just letting these little windows emerge from different points of resonance. For me, I lived in San Francisco for a year …

Chicago boy.

JN: Yeah, I’m a Chicago boy. Just letting those voices emerge. And I think sometimes, particularly when we live in an age where — and, again, some of this is good — we are, from both sides, kind of political fire-branding all the time, and we are literally driving home messages all the time. If you can find a way to let people’s humanity emerge in a less heavy-handed way, sometimes that can be, for me, a little bit more … you just feel it more.

Yeah, yeah. And I think as well … the other thing that has to be absolute is our integrity. Whichever side you’re on. No matter how low the other side goes, we have to stay high, because even if that means losing something in the short term, if we lose that, we lose everything in the long term. And I think that kindness and compassion, that’s our everything.

AR: It is.

We can’t let go of that.

AR: This summer, we did some festivals in Canada and, at one of them, Billy Bragg and Joe Henry were doing their duo together and Billy, at one point, said to the audience, “You know what we do? We’re musicians, but really, empathy is our currency. That’s our job, our job is to remind ourselves and each other of our shared human experience.” And I think he said, “Cynicism is the enemy and empathy is our currency.” That just really resonated for me, that idea. Empathy is not easy, either. As you said, it’s really not easy sometimes. It’s really hard sometimes. You wanna have this knee-jerk “No!”

It is tough, but there are so many little, sort of everyday activisms — “love is resistance” type of stuff. A song, a smile, a hug. That’s when I knew you were my people is the first time we hugged, I was like “Oh, yeah, we’re gonna be okay!”

AR: [Laughs] Friends!

But yeah, and I think all of those things — being joyful, coming together, sharing in an experience of music — that’s all resistance, when what you’re sort of staring down together is so dark and full of hate.

JT: We’re lucky to do what we do. It’s easy to sound … I mean it’s kind of a cliché, like “music is the common language” … but it is! [Laughs] I’ve never seen anything kind of like disarm or get people to put aside [that] first level of armor or defense, when they’re in a room. I’ve never seen that get done away with more effectively than with music. And that’s what I come back to it for, when I’m not performing, when I’m just listening to it.

AR: More than that, because we’re traveling so much with our music, we’re on the road 180-200 days of the year at this point. And we’re going all over this country from red state to blue state, to Canada, to parts of Europe, and we’ve received so much kindness from strangers everywhere, everywhere we go. When you are just at home and [aren’t] meeting people every day and seeing these cycles of awful things that get replayed and replayed and replayed, you can start to have a very skewed perception that that’s the majority of the world, and it’s not! It’s just not. The majority of the world, the majority of people, are kind. Like what we were talking about, the vast majority. We received so much kindness from strangers, from all backgrounds and walks of life and belief systems and all the rest of it. So it’s really a reminder to us, literally daily, when we’re out in the wind, out in this country and all over the place, the kind of kindness we receive, it reminds us that this is also true.

Watch all the episodes on YouTube, or download and subscribe to the Hangin’ & Sangin’ podcast and other BGS programs every week via iTunes, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

LISTEN: Kyle Carey, ‘The Art of Forgetting’

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Artist: Kyle Carey
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY
Song: “The Art of Forgetting”
Album: The Art of Forgetting
Release Date: January 26, 2018
Label: World Music Network’s Riverboat Records

In Their Words: “‘The Art of Forgetting’ is a seasonal love song I wrote with influences of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s ‘Sonnet XLII’ and Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘One Art.’ My producer, Dirk Powell, and I began the track with an LP-style introduction — to highlight the sensuality of the influences in the song. We also wanted this to allude to a sense of time travel, which is encapsulated in the different eras and influences touched upon throughout the album.” — Kyle Carey

Photo Credit: The Wild Air Photo

Cary Morin Picks His Piece

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“Let there be no question of who’s wrong and who’s right. There should be no compromise. We all stand up and fight in the dawn’s early light,” Cary Morin sings on “Dawn’s Early Light,” written in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe during last year’s protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

“A friend of mine was doing a show [at Standing Rock with the Indigo Girls] and she had asked me, just in passing, if I would write a song for the Standing Rock movement,” Morin explains. “I felt like there were a lot of people writing songs about that, at that time, and I wanted this one to be a little different and stand out a little bit, so it was really more concentrated on the activism, in general, and not so much Standing Rock, but just the whole idea of people coming together to promote clean water.”

“Dawn’s Early Light” is one of the poignant original songs featured on Morin’s latest album, Cradle to the Grave. In order to lend his perspective, Morin tapped into his experience growing up as a Crow tribal member near the Missouri River in Montana.

“When you think about roots music in America, it’s a culmination of so many things. It’s all the stuff blended together, much like the culture in this country is people from all over the world that end up here and create a unique situation,” Morin explains. “With my Native heritage, I could say that I’m really the only finger-style Crow guy on the entire planet. That’s unique. But we all can say that, to some degree. We all have unique things that make us who we are, and I’m really thankful to have grown up in the area that I did, surrounded by the people that I did.”

Morin came to the guitar by way of the piano, which he first began playing around the age of 10. When he picked up a guitar a couple years later, he was enamored. He played by ear, emulating the sounds he loved from his parents’ and brother’s record collection: Chet Atkins, James Taylor, Cat Stevens and Neil Young.

“I grew up in the ‘70s so, at that time, [there was] no Internet, there was very little TV, mostly radio. And the local music scene was really pretty folky and a lot of bluegrass, so I really grew up in the pursuit of flat-picking and [was influenced by] popular bluegrass bands at the time — David Bromberg, Norman Blake, Tony Rice,” says Morin. “I had really fantastic examples of what the music should be, but then I kind of mashed everything up into a combination of bluegrass and finger-style stuff, mostly from Leo Kottke, which turned into this thing that I do now.”

Morin moved to Colorado just out of high school and formed the Atoll, a world-beat band that he toured with for more than 20 years. “I played electric guitar [in the band], but I continued to mess around with the acoustic guitar,” he says. “Once I stopped doing [the band], my focus was really just acoustic guitar and a lot of practicing — just hours and hours of sitting around and playing. To this day, I try to play quite a lot. I’ve been introduced to open-D tuning by a friend of mine, and it took me about a year to get it going and figure out just the basics of it. But then, once I got it going, I just found it to be really fascinating, and I continue to learn new stuff all the time with that tuning. I just love the way it sounds. There’s a fullness and richness to it that I can’t seem to get out of standard tuning.”

Morin’s reconnection with the acoustic guitar led to the release of his most recent string of solo acoustic albums. Cradle to the Grave is the fourth in the series showcasing his adept fingerpicking style and warm, inviting vocals. An amalgamation of bluegrass, country, rock ’n’ roll, and blues, the album features eight original tunes and three cover songs: Willie Brown’s “Mississippi Blues” and, perhaps more surprisingly, Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” and Phish’s “Back on the Train.”

“Phish is one of my favorite bands … I think that Trey’s playing has just really been inspiring and just the whole feel of the band and the approach they take. There’s so much freedom in what they do, and I used that as an example with my band, when I was rolling around playing clubs and festivals,” Morin explains. “A lot of times we’d play five songs without stopping. We’d just roll from tune to tune, and the whole point of that band was really dance music, just to provide an outlet for people to go out and have fun and dance.”

Morin uses the same ethos in his current performances touring behind his solo efforts.

“As a solo player, I can do whatever I want. I can play in whatever key. I can speed things up or slow it down, or just kind of make things up as I go along. And I really dig that freedom to just do whatever I want on stage,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll try stuff and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But when it does, it’s a great feeling, and then it’s gone forever.”

While solo spontaneity on stage leads to such ephemeral moments, Morin has a solidified team off-stage that serves as his backbone — and they’re not going anywhere. From recording to promotion, it’s an organic, family affair.

“What I like about these four records [is that] the recordings are all done live in the studio with no headphones. I’ll sit and play these songs, and just play and play and play them, and a friend of mine has recorded all these albums,” Morin explains. “We’ve gotten together, I think, a pretty successful team with Maple Street Music and [my wife] promoting the live shows and the recordings, and Rich [Werdes] recording them, and we have the same person that’s been mastering and mixing the CDs, too. It’s just like the perfect combination of people and I like to think that I promote one guy, one guitar. People still are interested in such a thing … I just really enjoy being able to stand on stage by myself being able to do what I do.”

Photo credit: Timothy Duffy

WATCH: Befangled Night Bird, ‘Booth Shot Lincoln’

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Artist: Tristan Scroggins, Ellie Hakanson, Allanah Thornburgh, and Ryan McAuley (aka Befangled Night Bird)
Hometown: Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland
Song: “Booth Shot Lincoln”

In Their Words: “My favorite thing about touring in Ireland is getting to visit and play music with Alannah and Ryan and a collection of other incredible, young Irish musicians who we inexplicably met through Lauren Varian, the director of this video. It was really special to get to capture this kind of behind-the-scenes, cross-genre interaction, especially at a place like the Back Loft with a videographer as talented as Myles O’Reiley.” — Tristan Scroggins

Photo credit: Lauren Varian

LISTEN: Bartees & the Strange Fruit, ‘Going Going’

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Artist: Bartees & the Strange Fruit
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY
Song: “Going Going”
Album: Magic Boy
Release Date: December 8, 2017

In Their Words: “This song is about growing up in and eventually leaving Oklahoma, and looking back on people in the Black community who taught me key lessons on resilience and faith, and to not be afraid of who might be knocking on the door. The opening verse highlights some of those competing feelings of fear, hopelessness, and defiance, feelings Black people in the South understand very well.

I eventually left Oklahoma and struggled over the years, as I tried to forget about that place. It’s only now that I’m realizing that the lessons I learned there are what make me different. A lot of people who leave home to try new things probably feel this way, too. This song is for them.” — Bartees Cox

Photo credit: Joshua Priestly

WATCH: Tommy Emmanuel and David Grisman, “Cinderella’s Fella”

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Artist: Tommy Emmanuel and David Grisman
Hometown: Nashville, TN
Song: “Cinderella’s Fella”
Album: PICKIN’
Release Date: November 3, 2017
Label: Acoustic Disc

In Their Words: “‘Cinderella’s Fella’ was written after sampling a fine strain of weed grown by my late friend Jerome Schwartz in Petaluma. He called it ‘Cinderella’ and thus I became her ‘fella’ after inspiration took hold in the form of this airy dawg/jazz waltz. It was a gas playing and recording with the one and only Tommy Emmanuel in my living room, and I’m really looking forward to our first tour together.” — David Grisman

Photo credit: Clara Emmanuel

Covering Milestones: A Conversation with the Wailin’ Jennys

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When the Wailin’ Jennys got back in the studio to record their new album, Fifteen, which celebrates the group’s anniversary together, Nicky Mehta, Ruth Moody, and Heather Masse didn’t have much time. Five days, to be exact. Between the fact that all three women are mothers now and live in different cities, planning and preparation have given over to spontaneity and trust. But their approach on this latest LP — a set of covers — doesn’t sacrifice any of the considerate care that has always infused their siren-song harmonies. If anything, they’ve used the studio to capture the magic they radiate during their live shows.

There’s a confidence brimming from every song, whether it’s their reverent, respectful, or resplendent
takes on Dolly Parton’s “Light of a Clear Blue Morning,” Emmylou Harris’s “Boulder to Birmingham,” and Tom Petty’s “Wildflower,” respectively. The trio seems poised and ready to create original music at some point — schedules permitting — but in the meantime, they’ve jumped back into the waters, and are enjoying the stirring act of raising their voices at a time when the messages they’ve come to deliver need sharing more than ever.

What it is about this creative relationship that keeps bringing you all back together?

Nicky Mehta: It’s sort of never been discussed that we would ever take a break and not keep working together. I think it’s always been assumed that we would continue on as long as it felt satisfying to all of us. I think this is a type of project that none of us have access to outside of what we’re doing, so it’s a unique thing for all of us to be doing. That’s what keeps us coming back. We also have such an amazing audience that are really faithful and have seen us through a lot of hiatuses, and I think we want to come back to them, as well.

Heather Masse: I think people have been as receptive. I feel like the live shows, people are there with you and fully present and still really excited about it.

Ruth Moody: I agree. I think we’ve been so lucky with our fanbase. We have taken three hiatuses. Each time it was for each of us to have babies, procreate. [Laughs] And each time our agent was like, “It’s too long to be off the road,” and every time we came back, our audiences have been there and continued to grow over the last 10 years — 15, but specifically 10 since Heather joined the band. Who knows why, but we have been lucky in that way.

As you ebb and flow from this project, how do you see yourself fitting within the growing number of female trios in North America? There are many more names on that list now, beyond folk even.

NM: I think that’s something that I’ve observed, as well. It’s crazy how many trios are out there now, which is great, and everybody’s doing something different. What they focus on, in terms of style of music, is different. We’ve always made decisions about breaks in the road from a place that’s really necessary for each of us, personally. I don’t think we’ve ever worried too much about that because there are things we have to do and so we’ll see what happens after. Once you’ve taken one break and things successfully resume, there’s less trepidation about that. It sort of feels as though there are a lot of trios out there, but it hasn’t felt like there’s some huge competition.

Your harmonies have a touch of the familial about them, and yet you’re not related by blood. How do you explain that magic?

RM: We’ve been really lucky with our blend. We all grew up singing and singing harmonies, and so it’s something we do instinctively — blending with other voices — so that helps to have the ability to listen and blend. But even then it’s not always a slam dunk, so I think we’ve been really lucky that our voices do blend and the ranges are compatible. We switch around depending on who’s singing lead, but we’ve been lucky that that’s been the natural fit.

HM: When I first met the ladies, they were playing in Philadelphia at World Café, and I was sort of auditioning, and the only place that we could sing was in a handicapped women’s bathroom that we found. I was astonished when we all started singing together that it felt like I was singing with my sisters. We just got lucky. It is like we’re sisters, so it’s nice.

I can’t even imagine what the echo would’ve sounded like in that bathroom!

HM: It was really special. I think it was a particularly flattering echo.

You covered Dolly Parton’s “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” for the Canadian film The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mom some years back. Her version has a praise and worship style about it, but yours feels more hymnal. How did you strike upon that interpretation?

RM: That was a good example of being pushed a little bit to do something. The director of the film really wanted us to do that song because the whole soundtrack is Dolly Parton. She wanted us to do it and she wanted it to be a cappella. Who knows if we would’ve gravitated in that direction, but that was cool that we got those instructions, and it really set our focus in that way. I think the best way of making something effective — if you’re going to do a cover — is to approach it in a different way. Especially in the beginning, before it gets into the groove, it does have a more plaintive, hymnal feeling. I think that did make it different from the original.

You triple the vocals on the line “Everything’s gonna be alright,” before going back into harmonies. To me, as a female listener, it feels so necessary to hear that from other women, especially with everything going on these days. What kind of message do you hope to be offering still?

NM: I think we all share the wish to heal and comfort people with what we do, and I think that we all do our own thing, in terms of staying on top of what’s going on in the world and addressing it in different ways. But in terms of what the band does is to reach out to people and support and have the music give people relief and hope and the feeling like, eventually, things will be okay. A lot of our audience, they work in fields where they’re addressing a lot of these issues all the time, and I think it’s nice for them to be able to come to a concert and feel that there’s understanding and there’s still love out there and there’s still hope.

The Tom Petty cover feels apt, although I realize you recorded before his passing. Why “Wildflowers,” in particular, besides the fact that it’s a great song?

HM: I think there’s a way in which, when we hear a song or we bring a song to the band, we sort of know if it’s going to be a Jennys song or not, if it’ll work with our configuration and the way we arrange things. I can’t remember if I brought it up — it felt like something that was on all of our lists of songs to cover — I know that, in my mind, I always thought of it as being a great Jennys cover. It’s hard to describe what the qualifications would be for a Jennys song, but it has a lot of openness and the message is really beautiful, and the melody is very beautiful.

RM: A lot of tenderness, too. It leads itself so well to harmony, which is always a factor for us.

True, you wouldn’t want to pursue a song that doesn’t give you that space.

RM: Yeah, exactly.

It’s a beautiful rendition. So I know recording this album happened quickly because of your differing schedules, but oddly enough, it feels like one of your most grounded albums. What contributed to that sense of confidence?

HM: We only had five days, but we have years of being together and working together that kind of went into it. Even though we knew it would be a bit frantic with a lot of challenges, we knew that we had the foundation. This album was, essentially, for the fans, because they have waited so long for a new record, and so, in spite of not having a lot of time and being mothers, we wanted to make this happen. We thought an appropriate way to approach the album would be to do it live off the floor, and to do a more pared-down recording that mirrors our live performances. That probably helped us feel comfortable and confident in the studio because we’re doing what we, essentially, do on stage.

RM: I think becoming a mother, also, you just have such a different perspective on everything. We didn’t have a lot of time, and normally I feel we can get a little up tight and be perfectionists about stuff. And we were able to let some of that go a little. It’s the perfect album for feeling more grounded and more natural, because we didn’t have time to go back and redo things or try new things out. We just kinda did it and had to be okay with whatever happened, because we didn’t have the time to do anything else. Sometimes there’s a real magic to that.

Photo credit: Art Turner

Steve Martin: Making the Same Sound Different

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The sound of a five-string banjo has a cosmic pull. When Earl Scruggs first took to the Grand Ole Opry stage with Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys in 1945, his rapid-fire, three-finger picking style shocked and stunned the Ryman Auditorium audience and radio listeners across the country. The standing ovation he received shook the entire building to its rafters with hands clapping, boots stomping, and hootin’ and hollerin’. It was the Big Bang of bluegrass banjo.

Almost every banjo player could tell you the first time they heard the instrument, the first time they encountered its cosmic pull — a personal, introspective banjo Big Bang unique to each person who is struck by its irresistible, joyful, magnetic sound. Steve Martin describes the first time he heard a banjo as his “What’s that!?” moment. “I kind of pin it on the Kingston Trio,” he remembers. “But I know there were earlier things. I fell in love with the four-string banjo, too. When I was 11, I would go to Disneyland to see the Golden Horseshoe Revue, and there was a four-string banjo player. When I worked at Knott’s Berry Farm, there was a four-string banjo player there, too.” His voice shifts to a whisper, as he adds, “But, we all know that five is better.”

He continues, “I do believe it was kind of the Kingston Trio or folk music, in general, that really made the sound like, ‘Wow, what a happy, wonderful sound!’”

He picked up the banjo as a teenager, taking on three-finger, Scruggs-style picking with the help and influence of his friend John McEuen. But, unlike most banjo pickers, who choose one style — Scruggs’ namesake method, or jazz and ragtime on tenor and plectrum banjos, or any of several types of frailing — Martin also had a “What’s that!?” moment with the old-time form, clawhammer: “It was a record called 5-String Banjo Greats and another record called the Old-Time Banjo Project. They were both compilations. So I don’t know who introduced me to clawhammer. When I was learning three-finger and I was into it about three years, I started to really notice clawhammer, and I go, ‘Oh, no. I have to learn that, too.’”

He is a master of both three-finger and clawhammer to this day and, on his brand new record, The Long-Awaited Album, he shifts effortlessly between the two — sometimes within one song.

Through his career as a comedian and actor, the banjo was ever at Martin’s side. It was a part of his stand-up act, it was peppered into his comedy albums, and it made cameos on his TV appearances. It would be cliché to assume that the banjo and bluegrass were a byproduct of Martin’s comedy career, but the instrument was never an afterthought, an addendum, or a prop. In fact, bluegrass and folk music showed him from his early show biz days working at theme parks that humor was an integral part of these musical traditions.

“When I first started hearing live music, like the Dillards or folk music of some kind, they all did jokes,” he says. “They all did funny intros to songs. They did riffs. They did bits. And then they did their music. That’s essentially what we’re doing now.” The silly, whimsical, comedic elements of the music Martin makes with his collaborators, friends, and backing band — the Steep Canyon Rangers — are just as much a testament to Martin’s history with bluegrass as they are a testament to his extraordinary comedy career.

During the seven years that elapsed between their last bluegrass album, Rare Bird Alert, and The Long-Awaited Album, Martin and the Rangers wrote, developed, and arranged the project’s material during soundchecks, band rehearsals, and downtime on the bus. Barn-burning, Scruggs-style tunes and contemplative, frailing instrumentals are sprinkled amidst love songs and story songs, silly and earnest, all steeped in quirky, humorous inventiveness. The album is centered on a solidly bluegrass aesthetic — but bluegrass is not a default setting.

Musical and production choices for each song were pointed and deliberate, with producer Peter Asher, Martin, and the Rangers keeping each song central and building out the sound around any given track’s core idea. “I love the sound of the five, six instruments that are traditionally bluegrass,” Martin clarifies. “That’s all we need. The Rangers, they say bluegrass is five musicians playing all the time. Other music is five musicians not playing all the time. In bluegrass, they have breaks, but there’s always the backup going. There’s always everybody chopping. So I thought, ‘What if we left out some of the instruments? What if we were not playing all the time?’ It really made a different sound.”

By leaving out an instrument here or there, adding in a cello or, in the case of the lead track, “Santa Fe,” an entire Mariachi band, the album’s sound registers immediately as bluegrass, but refuses to be lazily or automatically categorized as such. First and foremost, it sounds like Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers. “I’ve always loved the idea of the sound of the banjo against the cello, or viola, or violin, because you have the staccato notes against the long notes. The cello or viola contribute to the melancholy and mood of the banjo. But mostly, it’s just us, the seven musicians, including myself. We can reproduce it on stage … except for the mariachi. But the song called for a mariachi band, you know?” He laughs and adds, “There’s almost no way to avoid it.”

Where many bluegrass and folk writers eschew modern vernacular, places, and topics, Martin leans in, embracing contemporary scenarios and themes that don’t necessarily fit the stereotypes of train-hopping, moonshine-running, field-plowing folk music. The Olive Garden, nights in a biology laboratory, a gate at an airport, “Angeline the Barista” … the timelessness of roots and folk music isn’t lost in these themes and settings; it’s enhanced, it’s relatable, and it’s damn funny.

“I’ve written a song about a train, and I’ve written a song about Paul Revere. I think it’s got to be specific for people. They’ve got to go, ‘I know that!’ If I’m writing about a train, I know that 99 percent of people that the song will be heard by won’t really have that experience. But if I write about the Olive Garden and a girl busting up with you, I think a lot of people can relate to that, even if they don’t have that exact experience.”

The relatability and visibility of Martin’s music have brought bluegrass — and the banjo — to countless ears that may have never heard it otherwise. In 2015, the International Bluegrass Music Association awarded Martin a Distinguished Achievement Award with this visibility and outreach in mind. With The Long-Awaited Album; the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass that he awards annually; a national tour of his banjo-forward, Tony-nominated Broadway musical, Bright Star; and a heavy touring schedule criss-crossing the country with the Steep Canyon Rangers and his longtime comedy partner, Martin Short, Martin is poised to continue bringing the banjo to many first-time listeners.

But when faced with the idea that he, himself, could very well be the “What’s that?!” moment for an entire generation of brand new banjo players, he is unfalteringly modest. “What I try to express with the banjo is the sound of the banjo. When I first heard Earl Scruggs, I loved his skill, his timing, and his musicianship. I regard myself as someone who’s expressing the sound of the banjo rather than being a superior, technical player like Béla Fleck. So, if anyone picks up the banjo from hearing me, it’s because they fell in love with the sound of the banjo. What I do is get the sound of the banjo out there to a broader world, I guess.”

Lede illustration by Cat Ferraz.